Aerial vehicles such as airplanes or helicopters are commonly used to transport people or cargo from an origin to a destination by air. Aerial vehicles may be delicate machines that are formed from lightweight metals, plastics or composites and equipped with motors, rotors or turbofans that are designed to meet or exceed a number of operational constraints or requirements such as speed, altitude or lift. For example, many unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs, or drones) are built from molded plastic frames and outfitted with electric motors powered by onboard batteries that permit the vehicles to conduct lifting or thrusting operations, while larger aerial vehicles such as jumbo jets feature aluminum, titanium or carbon fiber frames and skins and are equipped with petroleum-powered jet engines capable of generating tens of thousands of pounds-force.
During flight operations, an aerial vehicle may be subject to intense vibrations or oscillations due to thrusting or lifting forces acting on the aerial vehicle, environmental conditions in an area where the aerial vehicle operates or has operated, shocks or impacts from contact with one or more other objects, or from any other sources. Therefore, from time to time, such as after a nominal or predetermined number of operating hours or missions, aerial vehicles are commonly taken out of service for a number of manual or visual inspections. Such inspections are intended to determine whether the strength and integrity of the various components of the aerial vehicle remain sufficient for normal operations. For example, an aerial vehicle may be searched for microfractures, cracks, loosened or broken fasteners, corrosions, fatigue, or evidence of other physical manifestations of stress or strain.
Performing manual or visual inspections typically requires taking an aerial vehicle out of service for extended durations, however. For example, depending on a size of an aerial vehicle, or a length of time since a most recent inspection, a typical inspection of the aerial vehicle may require tens or hundreds of man-hours in order to be completed. Even where a manual or visual inspection results in a determination that the integrity of the aerial vehicle is sound and that the aerial vehicle is operating in a safe and satisfactory manner, the aerial vehicle must still be taken out of service in order to arrive at that determination. Conversely, where an inspection regime calls for manual or visual evaluations to be conducted periodically, e.g., after a predetermined number of hours have lapsed or missions have been completed, such evaluations are unable to determine when an operational issue arises between such periodic inspections, and implementing a remedy for the operational issue is necessarily delayed. Every hour in which an aerial vehicle is out-of-service is an hour in which the aerial vehicle is not providing value.